By Bob Ball

Nearly twenty years ago, I first crossed British Columbia's Skeena River at the southern end of the Cassiar Highway during my southbound journey home from a summer of guiding in Alaska. The sheer breadth of the river was a definite surprise.

Seeing it the for the first time had the wheels in my brain spinning wildly: "How am I going to fish this thing?" While not quite the shipping lanes of the Willamette or Columbia where I fished for salmon as a youngster, it still seemed huge  -  far bigger water than I had ever chased steelhead in before.

I had spent no more than a handful of days steelhead fishing on some larger Oregon rivers in my youth. This was long before I did my heavy steelheading coursework in the classrooms of the small rivers of the Olympic Peninsula and the upper reaches of some Puget Sound streams. Obviously, this was going to be a different learning experience.

Unfortunately, my early grades in the new school were just mediocre  -  but they improved rapidly with a change in study skills. It wasn't a matter of the coursework being more difficult; I now know that fishing a big river is no more difficult than plying the waters of a more defined small stream, but it does require a different mindset. Many steelhead anglers, even those with many years of fishing under their belts, can struggle with the transition between small and large rivers; but most successful small-stream anglers possess all the knowledge they need to fish larger streams. The biggest key is being able to dissect a large river into a number of smaller parts and to focus on these areas.

Big river or little river? Still the same fish: It's important to remember that regardless of stream size, returning steelhead have the same basic water preferences. Instinctively, a steelhead will still require the need to feel protected in the confines of a river, yet will expend as little energy as possible in achieving this goal.

Whether the river is large or small, the rules normally change little. The water depths and current flows occupied by steelhead are usually quite similar when comparing large and small streams. Steelhead do not automatically look for the deepest possible water in a river if shallower water affords adequate protection. Larger streams are typically more turbid than smaller tributaries and therefore fish often do not need to seek out a bigger river's deepest channels. In addition, deep water is often found in association with some of the heaviest currents in larger rivers and fish would be expending far more energy than needed if they were to hold there.

The biggest challenge  -  yourself: Many small-stream anglers fish with the mindset that 90 percent of the fish live in 10 percent of a given river. The same rule of thumb applies in larger streams and perhaps even decreases the latter percentage.

The biggest obstacle for an angler to overcome on a larger river is the ability to focus on these classic "holding" areas and to simply ignore the rest of the river. While a simple enough concept, the discipline to incorporate this into a day's fishing is what typically separates the successful from the goose-egged on larger rivers.

On a small river, making a few stray cats into the "maybe" water only takes a few moments. On a large river, it may take a considerable amount of time to cover the mediocre water and by day's end you've cut well into the time you may have spent on "prime" pieces.

An effective tool in bigger water is to set invisible boundaries of where the fish should be and keep your casts or back-trolling efforts within that area. It's common to want to extend this zone if you're not seeing immediate results, but stick with your game plan. Easier said than done, I often have to remind myself having to stay within these boundaries as I work through a run of a bigger river.

Recognizing the good and the bad: In most large rivers, the easiest method to start choosing what you should fish is to mentally split the river from bank to bank into "thirds": a right, middle, and a left. Then, look at that middle third and forget about it! Yes, simply throw it away. A few fish probably call that area their temporary home, but we're looking for most of the fish, not a few of them. Of course, there will always be a few exceptions to this approach with some form of island or bar generally responsible for the anomalies.

It's within the remaining thirds that anglers should look for the structures and currents that form familiar steelhead water; these features may be there and they may not. If there is a look to water surface or river structure that looks like a favorite locale on a smaller stream, the odds are quite high that this is place that you're going to want to fish. If not, I suggest moving.

Riffles, current seams, inside corners, and smooth tailouts at the end of long, deep canyon sections are all examples of some of those places you might wish to focus. Even a small area of slightly greater—and possibly lesser—depth in a long flat piece of water creates a piece of favorable holding water with the changes to the current. These are the same structures that are also typically targeted in smaller streams, but in big streams the prime spots are surrounded by far more relatively unproductive water and often tend to blend in.

Fishing a large river might be likened to looking for small, pocket water in a traditional-sized stream, but in the case of a large river, the "pockets" are often as big as a main pool on smaller streams.

Boating vs. Banking: Bank anglers often face more logistical challenges on large rivers. For anglers on foot, they will simply be left with what water is on the shoreward side of that middle third we've tossed aside. Boat anglers have a distinct advantage in this case, because they still have options to choose from; they can position their boat over the middle third and cast to the most likely of the remaining thirds. One of these is generally a "possible" and the other a "prime" based on the available structure.

Bank anglers also have to deal with the challenge of getting from one "hole" to another. The distance between the prime runs on big rivers is often several hundred yards to even a mile or more. If moving great distances between spots, traveling by foot can cut into productive fishing time and access issues can also come into play. Because of these factors, shore anglers should typically have a better plan of attack of what options they wish to fish on a given day should a spot not pay off or if their competition gets there first.

If prime locations are limited, especially when bank fishing, don't overlook the idea fishing a piece of water a second or even a third time (especially if you are fairly sure fish are moving steadily). Personally I would much rather go through a good piece of big river water multiple times (sometimes, with slight tweak of methods), rather than spend too much time on the move or fishing water that I wouldn't consider "fishy".

Overcoming the mental challenges of fishing big water is the key to finding regular success. Fishing under conditions in which an inflated number of fish are holding in the large stream may prove helpful in achieving the right frame of mind to feel confident in your chances each time you wet a line, regardless of the size of the river.